Day 3 - May 24th Thursday (Beijing Capital Tire)

Beijing Capital Tire (BCT)

Beijing Capital Tire is a State Owned Enterprise at the provincial level. It is one of the 24 state important tire manufacturers in China. BCT adopted machinery, technology and know-how from Pirelli in early 1990 and since then it has been manufacturing tires under several brand names. Initially, they were making 30 products from this tie up with Pirelli, but today they make more than 100 products, some of which have patents that are the IP of BCT. I was surprised to see that 45% of their sales come from the global market considering how fast the local Chinese market has grown in the past few years. I think that BCT has a great potential to serve the Chinese market by collaborating with car manufacturers and being an OEM partner. Now that the car buyers have been using cars for a few years, they feel the need to change their tires and BCT has a great potential to serve the after-sales tire market.

The visit to the production plant made me think of my family’s new production plant in India. When it was built, everyone thought that it was one of the most advanced and well-planned factory. However, this tire factory changed my views. I was under the impression that out clothes would get spoiled since we were visiting a tire factory that uses rubber (black carbon). But I was wrong. All the workers were dressed in smart blue jumpers and were working on machines and handling materials with their bare hands. C’mon they can at least use a pair of gloves to protect their hands from getting dirty and black. But again, I was to be proven wrong. There was no dirt, grease or any dark material on their hands. This certainly shows that the machinery in the factory was hi-tech and safe.

My only disappointment with the factory tour was that we were not explained the processes from start to finish. We had to make our own interpretations and do guess-work to move through the various steps in the art of tire-making. I understand that a group of 50 people is impossible to handle in such a huge factory, maybe we could have spilt in two or three smaller groups and given explanations at each step. Nonetheless, the engineers in the class helped me understand most of the processes.

Later in the evening, we got to visit the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. These places are of tremendous historical significance to China and the rest of the world. I have no recollection of the events that happened on June 4^th 1989. I am not sure if this has got to do with the censoring of media in India during those times, or maybe I was too young to understand the word around me. Forbidden City was magnificent and the history associated with it would take at least 2 days to understand.